


Victim

by PrinceDarcy



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canonical Character Death, Episode Related, Episode: s01e05 Coquilles, Gen, Missing Scene, Non-Graphic Violence, dark!Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 09:04:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1220500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDarcy/pseuds/PrinceDarcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth of the Angelmaker's death is not as simple as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victim

**Author's Note:**

> I've headcanoned for a very long time that Will killed Buddish and felt guilty about it - hence his slightly "off" attitude at the last crime scene and the rather guilt-ridden nature of his hallucination.
> 
> So I figured I'd write something.

Mrs. Buddish didn't give them the address of the farm - she didn't know anything more than the general area it was located in. That was enough for the FBI eventually, certainly, and more than that, it was enough for Will to figure it out first.

He left Jack manning the search, making some half-assed remark about having dogs to feed and papers to grade, knowing full-well that there were other things on his boss's mind than what he'd be doing for the next few hours. A killer waiting to be found, first and foremost, but something a great deal more personal than that. Will had seen the gears turning in Jack's mind as Mrs. Buddish spoke about her husband's illness. They clicked into place. Jammed. Stopped. That bought him time.

He got in his car and drove, windows down and radio blasting some greatest hit he'd never heard before and never would again, like he was just a college kid on a road trip again. He let the brisk air fill his lungs, chill the burning he seemed to feel from inside, and watched the scenery pass him by.

Will was on the road for two and a half hours before he found the right farm, dilapidated and lonely in an empty field, nothing around it but November's yellowed grass and leafless trees. He parked his car by an abandoned farmhouse, a sad old thing that probably wasn't much to look at the day it was built, much less now, years of wear stripping away the white paint in patches, like bald spots on a mangy animal.

Will paused by one of the windows, peeking through a gap in the boards that covered it up from the inside. It was dark inside, untouched by light, and in prototypical horror movie fashion, he stepped back with sick conviction that he had seen movement inside. Raccoons, most likely, or perhaps a stray cat or two. The sad old shed beyond the house was a quick distraction, once the loose-hanging piece of plywood over the door was kicked out of the way. It was still fully stocked; old tools and supplies with no monetary value lined the walls and were scattered over the floor. A figurative bird's nest of wire nearly tripped him on his way back out, and then, finally, there was the barn.

Will kept his hand on his gun as he entered.

Buddish had a knife in one hand, which wasn't surprising, and a box of matches, which, at first glance was. Hay cracked under Will's feet as he stepped towards the man at the barn's centre, and the surprise drained away - they were in a box of old, dry wood that was filled with nothing short of ideal kindling. One flame would light it up. Everything combustible would catch fire, and that was what Buddish was going to do. He would drop a match and set it aflame, like it had been when he was a boy and died in that barn before the life came back to him.

He couldn't make himself an angel, in the end, so he was going to burn and hope his guardian angel finished the job for him.

Will steadied his hand, drawing his gun out of the holster.

“This isn't how you want to die,” he said blankly, his voice sounding so little like his own that he was nearly compelled to look for who it was who was speaking. “is it?”

“Who are you?” Buddish's voice was weak as he looked up at his new company, kneeling in the dry hay as if in prayer. Perhaps he had been, before Will came in. Whatever he had been doing, he'd stripped himself of his shirt for it, laying it on the ground.

“I can help you.” Will picked up the coarse garment, folding it over his arm with one hand, keeping the gun pointed at Buddish's head. There was no way to miss the kill shot at this distance. One wrong move and the sick brain that betrayed that dying man would be splattered all over the hay.

“Drop the weapon and put your hands behind your head, Mr. Buddish. The matches, too.” Will returned his gun to his holster when Buddish complied, not wanting to make this any more complicated than it had to be. He pocketed the box of matches after it hit the hay, slipping it out of sight into the pocket of his jeans, and then, for a moment, he stared down at the knife.

After that moment's deliberation, he wrapped Buddish's shirt around his hand, grabbing the handle of the blade with the fabric as a buffer. This was hardly the time to be leaving fingerprints, not when he knew he'd be back here before sundown with whoever the FBI could spare. No, he knew enough to not leave evidence of anyone but Buddish behind.

“I know what you've done to people, what you turn them into.” Will knelt down to be level with Buddish, eyes not meeting the other man's but instead fixed on the knife gripped in his right hand. He knew what he was going to do with it, deep down, but in the same way he could say he had never been more confused and scared in his life.

“You want to be an angel yourself.” He continued, looking up and past Buddish as if he wasn't even there, the growing understanding in the other man's eyes only visible in Will's peripheral vision. He wondered what he'd see reflected in those eyes if he looked him straight on, if he'd see himself how Buddish saw the devils he killed to make his angels. Curiosity was quelled by the knowledge that if he looked Buddish in the eye, he'd lose his nerve. Undeniably.

“Are you an angel?” Buddish was most likely delirious, but it was with the thought that perhaps he wasn't entirely lucid himself that Will actually gave the question contemplation, wondering if, in this sick man's foggy mind, that was what he would qualify as. He pictured Garrett Jacob Hobbs on the ground full of lead, let himself feel Abigail's blood on his hands again. He remembered the fear, the _terror_ , and then the thrill and power and adrenaline roaring through his system. He had never wanted that moment to end.

Then he thought of Eldon Stammets, slumped against the wall with a hole in his shoulder, a thing as pitiful and primitive as the fungi he lined his gardens with corpses to grow while Will stared him down. He remembered how desperately his finger had twitched against the trigger, the urge to empty his gun into Stammets' head almost unbearably powerful, even after he knew Abigail was safe. He remembered his anger at the fact that the one and only shot he had taken had done nothing more than disarm.

 _Killing felt good to God too,_ Dr. Lecter had said then.

Will swallowed, the knife feeling heavy in his covered hand.

He thought of that little shed outside, knew it contained all the materials that he'd need at his disposal to do what he had to do, and he knew that he had all the time he needed. Even once this place had been found, Jack wouldn't come out here until he had Will in the passenger seat of his car. Will was an insurance measure going into these places now, a confirmation that whatever was found inside, there would be someone who could make sense of it.

Above all that, he knew what to do, where to make his cuts. He knew how long it would take for Buddish to die and what he would have to do to string him up once he had. He'd reconstructed Buddish's thinking twice already - in a way it would be doing something he'd already done. He knew Buddish's design and how to execute it.

Will stood, hay clinging to his jeans as he moved behind Buddish, kneeling down again and staring now that there weren't eyes there to make staring more difficult than it needed to be.

He knew it was wrong, in the most basic sense, but if Buddish had the choice, this was how he would want to end it. One last angel, one who died on his own terms. He'd beat God in the end, and then it would be over. That was why Will knew he had to do this, he needed it to be over. Ending things was in his job description, like it or not.

He let that hold the wrongness down, out of his mind, as he raised the knife close to the skin of Buddish's back, just where his spine met his neck.

“Not anymore.”

Will pressed the knife into the flesh, cutting the first red line down Buddish's spine. His hands shook, no more than Buddish's had when he'd done this himself - but he thought maybe, just maybe, the man under his knife was grateful.

He burned Buddish's shirt out in the field behind the barn, once he'd made sure he'd put everything in the shed back exactly how he had found it, including propping the plywood up over the door in as close an approximation of how it had been when he got there. The matches were thrown into the bushes afterward; no one would know to go looking for anything out there.

He returned to his car on unsteady legs, blood dripping red on his hands even though he knew he hadn't gotten any on him when he'd sliced up Buddish's back, when he dragged him up into the rafters with strength he didn't know he had to hang him there. He had no idea how he'd kept himself clean, but he had - but was it so surprising to see blood on his hands, figurative as it really was?

Will's first instinct was, perhaps reasonably, to scream once he got behind the wheel, to just let it out until his voice gave out, but he fought that impulse back, making a steady mantra for himself instead - one he repeated aloud to himself for the whole length of the drive back to Wolf Trap.

“It was his choice. I gave him choice. He isn't my victim. He isn't my victim. _He isn't my victim._ ”

By the time he was on the way back to the farm in the passenger seat of Jack's car, Will believed it.


End file.
